Who can't apply

If you've already been unsuccessful with a full application for this scheme, please contact us before you apply again.

What's expected of your host organisation

You must be based at an eligible host organisation in a low- or middle-income country for the research project. When your host organisation submits your application, they must agree to provide the space and resources you'll need from the start date through to the end date of your award.

You can apply to:

stay in your current laboratory (even if you already hold an established post)

return to a laboratory that you’ve worked in before

move to a new laboratory in a low- or middle-income country.

You can do your training at centres of excellence regionally or internationally.

Sponsor and supervisor

You should give careful thought to your choice of sponsor and supervisors. Your sponsor should:

hold an established post for the duration of the fellowship

have an ongoing research programme

have a strong track record in research, training and mentorship

provide you with guidance during the application process and fellowship.

Your sponsor should not expect you to spend more than eight hours a week on non-research activites (eg clinical duties, teaching or administration).

Your sponsor's support and mentorship should be part of a longer-term commitment to help you achieve your career aspirations.

You should also identify a supervisor who will be responsible for the day-to-day supervision of your research project. We expect you to identify additional supervisors for each period that you spend outside your host organisation.

You can nominate your sponsor as a supervisor, if appropriate.

Other schemes

International Intermediate Fellowships

Offering nationals of low- and middle-income countries the opportunity to lead their own research programmes.

International Master’s Fellowships

An International Training Fellowship is for three years, unless you want to hold it on a part-time basis.

If you want to do Master's training or a diploma course relevant to the research proposal, the fellowship can last up to four years. You must be able to justify this training.

The support includes:

You can only receive one salary. If you already have a salary, your host organisation may use it to pay the person who replaces you.

We will fund the total cost of your salary for the entire period of the grant.

You should ask your host organisation to calculate this. It should reflect the skills, responsibilities and expertise needed to carry out the role, and include:

your basic salary

employer’s contributions, including any statutory obligations (eg National Insurance contributions if you’re based in the UK) and pension scheme costs

any incremental progression up the salary scale

locally recognised allowances such as London allowance.

For Year 1 include any known pay awards for this period or an assumed percentage equivalent to our current inflation rate of 2.0% if this hasn’t been confirmed. We will automatically increase your salary from Year 2 onwards, based on our current inflation allowance rates.

other costs which are necessary for your research, eg computing and internet access costs, access to electronic resources, facility and running costs such as utilities, furniture, waste disposal and incineration, and building maintenance.

The total research management and support costs should not be more than 20% of the direct research costs you're requesting.

Visa and work permit costs

If you have named researchers on your grant whose salaries will be funded by Wellcome, you can ask for visa or work permit costs to help them take up their posts at the host organisation. You can also ask for:

visa costs for the researcher’s partner and dependent children

essential associated costs, such as travel to attend appointments at a visa application centre or embassy if you can justify these

Immigration Health Surcharge costs for the researcher, their partner and dependent children if they will be in the UK for six months or more.

We will pay for the materials and consumables you need to carry out your proposed research, including:

You can ask for funds to buy animals if they are essential to your project. We will also fund the charge-out rates for animal house facilities if your organisation uses full economic costing methodology. These costs include:

If the facilities or equipment were paid for by a Wellcome grant, you can only ask for access charges if:

the grant has ended

any support for running costs and maintenance contracts has ended.

Travel costs

You should use the most suitable and economical form of travel. Please include a breakdown for each part of your trip, eg air fares and number of journeys.

Conference attendance

You can ask for a contribution towards the costs of attending scientific and academic meetings and conferences, including registration fees. The limits are:

Fellow – £2,000 a year

Research staff employed on your grant – £1,000 each a year

You’ll need to specify the amount you’re requesting for each person.

You can also ask for costs to cover caring responsibilities if you or any staff employed on your grant attend a conference or research meeting. This includes childcare and any other caring responsibility you have, provided:

Wellcome is paying your salary

the conference is directly related to your research

the caring costs are over and above what you'd normally pay for care

the conference organiser and your employing organisation are unable to cover the costs.

You can ask for up to £1,000 per person for each conference.

Collaborative travel

We provide travel and subsistence costs for you and any research staff employed on your grant for visits to collaborators, and for collaborators to visit your laboratory. You’ll need to justify each visit and its duration.

Other travel

We will pay for other essential visits, eg to facilities, for sample collection and for fieldwork. You can include subsistence costs.

Subsistence costs

If you’re away for up to one month you can ask for subsistence costs. These include accommodation, meals and incidentals (eg refreshments or newspapers).

If your administering organisation has a subsistence policy, use their rates.

If your administering organisation doesn’t have a subsistence policy, please use the HMRC rates.

If you’re away for more than one month and up to 12 months, we will pay reasonable rental costs only, including aparthotels. You should discuss appropriate rates with your administering and host organisations, or Wellcome, as appropriate. We expect you to choose the most economical options, booked in advance where possible.

If you’re from a low- or middle- income country and will be working in a high-income country for more than one month and up to 12 months, you can also ask for up to £20 a day to cover extra costs, such as transport and incidentals.

If you’re away for more than 12 months, we will pay the costs of your housing. You should discuss your needs with your administering and host organisations.

The allowance we provide will be based on family and business need. We will set the maximum allowance we pay for each location. This will be based on current market data or, where data is unavailable, in consultation with your administering organisation, using equivalent market rates. Please contact us if you need help calculating the costs.

We will cover the direct expenses you have to pay to find and rent a home. We will not cover the cost of utilities or any refurbishment.

Overseas research

If you or any research staff employed on your grant will be doing research away from your home laboratory, we'll help with the additional costs of working on the project overseas. Please see the 'Overseas allowances' section for details.

If you or any staff employed on your grant will be spending time in another country, we’ll help you with the additional costs of working on the project overseas.

Our overseas allowances are:

a contribution towards the personal cost of carrying out research overseas, to ensure that you are not disadvantaged

provided on the assumption that you’ll be paying income tax, either in your home country, or the country you will be working in (your personal tax is your responsibility).

provided on the understanding that you or your partner will not receive equivalent allowances from elsewhere

determined by the amount of time you will spend away from your home country.

If you will be away more than 12 months, we will provide overseas allowances for your partner and any dependants if they are travelling with you.

If you will be away for 12 months or less and can justify why your partner and dependants must travel with you, we may provide overseas allowances for them.

We define your partner as the person:

you’re married to

you’re not married to but with whom you’ve been in a relationship for at least a year

and

you live with at the same permanent address and share some form of joint financial commitment with (eg a mortgage).

Costs can include guards, panic buttons and alarms. You should ask your employing organisation for advice on the level of security you need.

If you’re away for up to one month you can ask for subsistence costs. These include accommodation, meals and incidentals (eg refreshments or newspapers).

If your administering organisation has a subsistence policy, use their rates.

If your administering organisation doesn’t have a subsistence policy, please use the HMRC rates.

If you’re away for more than one month and up to 12 months, we will pay reasonable rental costs only, including aparthotels. You should discuss appropriate rates with your administering and host organisations, or Wellcome, as appropriate. We expect you to choose the most economical options, booked in advance where possible.

If you’re from a low- or middle- income country and will be working in a high-income country for more than one month and up to 12 months, you can also ask for up to £20 a day to cover extra costs, such as transport and incidentals.

If you’re away for more than 12 months, we will pay the costs of your housing. You should discuss your needs with your administering and host organisations.

The allowance we provide will be based on family and business need. We will set the maximum allowance we pay for each location. This will be based on current market data or, where data is unavailable, in consultation with your administering organisation, using equivalent market rates. If you need help calculating the costs please contact Grants Management.

We will cover the direct expenses you have to pay to find and rent a home. We will not cover the cost of utilities or any refurbishment.

If you’re away for more than 12 months we will pay:

Local nursery or school fees

You can ask for these costs if you are in a location where there isn’t free local education of the same standard as in your home country.

Costs include:

local nursery school fees up to a maximum of 15 hours a week for 3 to 4 year olds

local junior or secondary school fees, up to the end of secondary school education.

Local international school fees

You can ask for these costs if local schools do not provide the same standard of education as in your home country. We will only pay the published termly school fees.

We will cover the cost of providing special needs education as far as possible. Please contact us to discuss your needs.

We would not usually expect to provide an education allowance if you will be working in a high-income country.

If you will be away for more than 12 months, we’ll pay for you to travel back to your home country for annual leave. This is in addition to your outward and return travel costs and depends on how long you will be away:

12-24 months – 1 annual leave trip

25-36 months – 2 annual leave trips

37-48 months – 3 annual leave trips

49-60 months – 4 annual leave trips

61-72 months – 5 annual leave trips.

All fares should be:

economy class

the most suitable and economical form of travel

booked in advance where possible.

If you will be away for more than 12 months, you can ask for up to 100 hours of lessons in the local language for you and/or your partner during the first 12 months of your visit.

We will cover 100% of the costs for local language school classes or up to 50% of the costs of individual tuition.

We will not cover the cost of examinations or personal learning materials such as DVDs and books.

We cover fieldwork costs if they’re essential and you can justify them. Costs can include:

survey and data collection, including communication and data collection services and any associated costs such as essential field materials, travel costs and language translation services

the purchase, hire and running costs of vehicles dedicated to your project

expenses for subjects and volunteers, including the recruitment of participants, their participatory fees and travel costs

statistical analysis.

You can ask for other fieldwork costs that aren’t listed here, but you’ll need to justify them.

Your grant includes a Flexible Funding Allowance (FFA), which you can use to pay for unanticipated costs. These can include directly incurred costs of your research, such as:

consumables, animals or equipment

the actual salary costs of people supported on your award

extending the award by a short period

page charges and/or costs for colour prints in journals (charges not related to the cost of making a paper compliant with our open access policy).

You don’t have to apply for an FFA. We calculate it and add it to your award.

The FFA is 2.5% of your total eligible costs and does not include an inflation allowance. It is capped at £50,000.

We will add an inflation allowance to your award.

How we calculate your inflation allowance

Your inflation allowance is based on your total eligible costs and the duration of the award. You'll receive the following allowance if the costs in your application are in pounds sterling, euros or US dollars.

Our inflation allowance is increasing. The following rates apply to grants awarded from 1 October 2017:

Award duration (in months)

Inflation allowance

0-12

0.0%

13-24

1.0%

25-36

2.0%

37-48

3.0%

49-60

4.1%

61-72

5.1%

73-84

6.2%

These rates are calculated using compound inflation at 2.0% a year from Year 2 onwards.

If your costs are in any other currency, we will use an inflation allowance that reflects the inflation rate of the country where the host organisation is based.

What to include in your application

The costs in your application must be based on current known costs, excluding inflation.

You should allow for salary pay awards during Year 1. These should be based on pay awards already agreed; if you don’t know what the pay award is yet then use our inflation rate.

The Trust’s studentship stipend scales for non-clinical/basic science PhD studentships include an annual increase for inflation.

The Flexible Funding Allowance can be used to fund the page charges and/or costs for colour prints for your original research papers.

You can also ask for the costs of publishing other material which is essential to your project, such as:

estates costs – such as building and premises costs, basic services and utilities. This also includes phone, postage, photocopying and stationery, unless you can justify these within a clinical or epidemiological study.*

research, technical and administrative staff whose time is shared across several projects and isn’t supported by an audit record*

PhD stipends

charge-out costs for major facilities* – departmental technical and administrative services, and use of existing equipment

cleaning, waste and other disposal costs*

*We will fund these costs in the case of animal-related research.

indirect costs – this includes general administration costs such as personnel, finance, library, room hire and some departmental services

Submit your preliminary application

Review of preliminary applications

We'll assess your eligibility and give advice about your competitiveness and the resources you've requested. We'll give you a decision within four weeks of the preliminary application deadline. If suitable, we'll invite you to submit a full application.

Submit your full application to your host organisation for approval

Complete the full application form on Grant Tracker. Submit it to the 'authorised organisational approver' at your host organisation for approval. Make sure you leave enough time for the approver to review and submit your application before the deadline. The approver may ask you to make changes to your application.

Host organisation reviews your application and submits it to us

Your application must be submitted by 17:00 (GMT/BST) on the deadline day.

External peer review

We’ll seek written comments from external expert reviewers.

Scientific review and shortlisting

The International Interview Committee will shortlist applications. If shortlisted, we'll notify you at least four weeks before an interview and send you unattributed comments from the external peer review.

Interview

If you're invited for interview, you'll be asked to make a short presentation. This will be followed by questions from the International Interview Committee. Interviews take place at the Wellcome offices in London. We'll provide travel and accommodation costs.

Start your fellowship

If successful, you should start your fellowship within one year of the award. Before you can start, you must have been awarded your PhD.